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The Kentucky Review
Volume 5 | Number 1
Article 4
Fall 1983
Slavery in Kentucky: A Civil War Casualty
Lowell H. Harrison
Western Kentucky University
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Harrison, Lowell H. (1983) "Slavery in Kentucky: A Civil War Casualty," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 5 : No. 1 , Article 4.
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Slavery in Kentucky: A Civil War Casualty*
Lowell H . Harrison
Slavery existed in Kentucky from its first days of settlement, and
the 1792 constitution recognized and protected the institution. The
state's slave population increased more rapidly than the white
population until 1830, when it reached 24 percent of the total. The
percentage declined to 19.5 in 1860, although the 225,483 reported
that year was the largest number in the state's history. While 28
percent of the white families owned slaves in 1850, only 5 of the
38,385 individual owners held as many as 100. The average owner
held 5.4 slaves, the smallest number in the slave states except for
Missouri .1
Antislavery sentiment also existed in Kentucky from its early
days of statehood, but the opponents of slavery were able to
accomplish little. Slavery's future was discussed at length in the
1849 constitutional convention, but the final document declared
that "the right of property is before and higher than any
constitutional sanction, and the right of an owner of a slave to his
property is the same and as inviolate as the right of an owner of
any property whatsoever." As one defender of slavery put it, "We
promised to fix the constitution so that a majority could not
oppress a minority, and we have done so. "2
When the Civil War began, Kentucky was one of the four slave
states that remained in the Union. For several months she
maintained a precarious neutrality, but by September 1861 the
Bluegrass State was a participant in the conflict. Despite postwar
legends, there is no doubt but that a majority of Kentuckians
favored the Union. Yet if there was a typical Kentucky voter in
1861, he supported the Union, believed in states' rights, and
condoned slavery.
Thus there was general outrage in the state when General John
C. Fremont on 30 August 1861 issued an order to confiscate the
property and free the slaves of disloyal Missourians. When
*This paper was originally presented at the Symposium in Honor of Dr.
Thomas D . Clark, University of Kentucky, 10 November 1981.
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d
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President Lincoln directed its withdrawal, he explained that the
policy would " ... perhaps ruin our rather fair prospects for
Kentucky." 3 But Lincoln soon came under heavy pressure from
antislavery advocates, and the existence of the peculiar institution
in some loyal states embarrassed the president.
In a 3 December 1861 message to Congress Lincoln suggested
that the general government might provide some compensation for
states which freed their slaves. Emancipation might be followed by
colonization "at some place or places in a climate congenial to
them . . .. " 4 His suggestion was ignored by Congress, but on 6
March 1862 Lincoln presented a more definite program. As he
sought support for it, he added details. If a state set a definite date
for the end of slavery-say, 1 January 1882-he would recommend
a payment of $400 per slave in U.S. 6 percent bonds. The 432,622
slaves in the loyal states could be freed for $173,000,000, the
approximate cost of 87 days of the war. Lincoln argued that his
proposal would shorten the war, for the Confederacy would have
to abandon any hope that the loyal slave states would join the
C.S.A.5
The president had failed to get a vote on compensated
emancipation in the Delaware legislature, but he placed his hopes
on Kentucky. His native state had more slaves than the other three
combined, and if she accepted the plan, surely the others would
follow suit. But if he expected an enthusiastic response from
Kentucky, the president was soon disappointed. Most Kentuckians
believed that the federal government had no constitutional right to
interfere with slavery in the states, and they were alarmed by and
resentful of Lincoln's plan. They were fighting for the preservation
of the Union, not the destruction of slavery. The Covington
Journal spoke for the majority of Kentuckians when it denied that
slavery was the cause of the war: "Upon the same reasoning the
timber of a house is the cause of the fire, and not the incendiary
who fired it." 6 Kentuckians blamed both the abolitionists and the
secessionists for the plight of the country, and they feared that
Lincoln was being prodded into an antislavery position. 'The
extreme men of the Republican party are advancing step by step to
the accomplishment of their long cherished purpose," a northern
Kentucky editor warned. 'The more moderate men of the party
follow on, feebly protesting as they advance, but occupying today
the ground that the radicals left yesterday. " 7
One irate citizen figured that the cost in Kentucky would be
33
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$100,000,000, a prohibitive sum. But that was beside the point, he
insisted, for Kentuckians did not want emancipation and would
oppose it. "Let them understand," he warned the abolitionists,
"that whenever they attempt this outrage upon humanity, the
Kentucky soldiery, who are now fighting in the Federal army, will
lay down their arms, or use them in defense of all they hold dear
on earth . ... "8
A particular fear was that emancipation would increase the
number of free blacks in the state. Restrictive laws had held the
total in 1860 to only 10,684-less than one percent of the
population. In December 1861 when emancipation was suggested,
a Louisville editor declared that if the slaves were freed 200,000
soldiers would be required "to retain Kentucky in the Union, and
then the soldiers would be compelled to aid in exterminating the
black race. " If the slaves were freed, he asserted, "there is but one
thing to be done with them; they must be wiped out-totally
obliterated. It must be a merciless, savage extermination. . . . The
two races . . . cannot exist in the same country, unless the black
race is in slavery."9
The protests at home were echoed by the Kentuckians' elected
representatives. In Congress John J. Crittenden, the aged
compromiser, asked that his state be left alone to determine her
own policy: "We have given you all the assurances [of loyalty]
that ought to be asked:" He did not fault Lincoln's intentions ("'
believe he means right. .. . "), but the president was wrong in his
request. 10 A member of the Kentucky House was so incensed that
he introduced a draconian measure requiring that "any person or
persons who have or who may advocate the doctrine of the
abolition or emancipation of slavery . .. either directly or
indirectly, or who sympathizes with the same, be and are hereby,
disfranchised for life." Such offenders also had to leave the state
within ten days. Despite the measure's obvious unconstitutionality,
it passed the House 48 to 29. 11
Despite such negative responses, Lincoln returned to his
proposal during the summer of 1862. By then Congress had
abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories,
measures that aroused deep apprehension in Kentucky. On
Saturday morning, 12 July, Lincoln met with the senators and
representatives from the loyal slave states. Reading from a
prepared statement, the president asserted that "I intend no
reproach or complaint, when I assure you that, in my opinion, if
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you all had voted for the resolution in the general emancipation of
last March, the war would now be substantially ended . . . . "
Their refusal to end slavery had encouraged the rebellious states to
believe that they might still be joined by the loyal slave states. The
lever of power in the South was slavery, Lincoln argued; break
that lever and the rebellion would end. If the rebellion continued,
he warned, "the institution in your States will be extinguished by
mere friction and abrasion-by the mere incidents of the war. ..
How much better for you, and for your people, to take the step
which, at once, shortens the war and secures substantial
compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other
event. "12
In the ensuing discussion Lincoln stressed again that what he
proposed was gradual, compensated emancipation followed by
colonization, but he had to admit that Congress had not approved
the plan or made financial provision for it. With Kentucky
Representative Charles A . Wickliffe of Bardstown as chairman, the
group replied on 14 July. They rejected the proposal, presented in
"undue haste," that would drastically alter their social system.
Slavery was a state matter, and their states did not choose to
abandon it. They insisted that Lincoln's proposal would lengthen
the war because it would unify the Southerners and spur them on
to greater effort. While they pledged their support to winning the
war, they requested that the president confine himself to his proper
constitutional role Y
Representative Samuel L. Casey from the First District was the
only Kentuckian to sign a minority report which called for
Lincoln's proposal to be submitted to their states . Pointing out that
the Confederates had considered ending slavery in return for
foreign recognition, the minority asserted that "if they can give up
slavery to destroy the Union, we can surely ask our people to
consider the question of emancipation to save the Union ."14
But the large majority of Kentuckians did not need to consider
it. The president had declared in his inaugural address: "I have no
purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful
right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." They
continued to cling to that position after Lincoln abandoned it.
The compensated emancipation issue was soon overshadowed
by the Emancipation Proclamation. Issued in preliminary form by
President Lincoln on 22 September 1862, the proclamation was to
35
HARRISON
take effect on 1 January 1863. That it did not apply to Kentucky
was of little matter; many Kentuckians saw it as portending the
ultimate fate of slavery in their state . "It is a most abominable,
infamous document," wrote a Kentucky soldier in the Union army .
"We find ourselves in arms to maintain doctrines, which, if
announced 12 months ago, would have driven us all . .. into the
ranks of the Southern Army. " 15 The editor of the Frankfort
Commonwealth was almost incoherent with rage. 'The President's
nigger proclamation ought to be crammed down his throat, if he
will not withdraw it, as a flagrant violation of his official
oath . . . ." 16 A Louisville editor wrote that "if this rebellion is not
put down, the fault will be at the door of a party that has
abandoned the idea of doing that work, and gives its sole attention
to abolishing slavery." 17 In March 1863 the legislature passed a law
that in effect enslaved any black entering the state who claimed
freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Union army presented a more immediate threat to
Kentucky slavery. Commanders used slaves for military projects,
and some abolitionist officers used every possible means to
interfere with the detested institution. Even loyal owners found
their slaves impressed for construction work or as teamsters.
Payment was often delayed or denied, and Confederate
sympathizers rarely got a hearing. The reaction was so adverse
that by December 1862 General H. B. Wright was convinced that
at least two-thirds of the legislature favored secession and would
proclaim it if given an opportunity to do so .18
The administration's decision to use black troops angered
Kentuckians even more than the earlier measures, for it challenged
the basic assumption that blacks were inherently inferior to whites .
But with a substantial number of Kentuckians in Confederate
service, the state had difficulty in meeting its manpower quotas .
The pool of black males was the only practical means of making
up the deficit. Lincoln tried to ease the initial shock by ordering
that only free Negroes be enrolled and by explaining that
enrollment did not mean immediate enlistment. Even so, the state
protests were so violent that the order was suspended until
February 1864.
But by then the need was so great that black males in Kentucky
were ordered enrolled, slaves as well as freedmen. Few
Kentuckians attempted to defend the policy; even devoted
Unionists denounced it. Colonel Frank Wolford, commander of the
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Camp Nelson , Kentucky , where black soldiers were mustered in and out of the Union Army, circa 1864
famed "Wild Riders" of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, promised to use
his troops to prevent black enlistments. Wolford was arrested but
denied a trial for fear it would make him a public martyr. Instead,
he was dishonorably discharged from the army that he had served
so well. Governor T. E. Bramlette had given lukewarm support to
the administration on the grounds that the sooner the war ended,
the sooner the Lincoln government could be discarded. Now, the
governor swore, "If the president does not, upon my demand, stop
the negro enrollment, I will."19 But after a confusing series of
mysterious conferences that included such staunch Unionists as the
Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge and General Stephen G. Burbridge, the
governor urged his people to limit their protests to lawful forms.
A few days later Lincoln assured Bramlette and a small delegation
that no blacks would be enlisted in any county that met its quota
with whites and that enlisted blacks would be trained out of
state. 20
Quotas were still not met, and on 15 April 1864 General
Burbridge ordered the enlistment of black males, slave as well as
free. Loyal owners were to be paid as much as $300 per slave, a
figure well below pre-war prices. When the initial rush of black
volunteers subsided, recruitment officers struck a heavy blow at
Kentucky slavery by actively seeking slaves for military service.
The 1864 presidential election gave Kentucky voters an
opportunity to indicate their opinion of Lincoln and his policies.
George B. McClellan got 64,546 votes to 27,797 for Lincoln. A few
days later Frank Wolford, Lt. Governor R. T. Jacob, and Paul R.
Shipman of the Louisville Journal were arrested for trying to
obstruct black enlistments and ordered banished to the
Confederacy. Faced with passionate protests, Lincoln pardoned
them, but the state was so outraged that in December a War
Department agent warned that "a large majority of Kentuckians
are today undoubtedly disloyal." 21
Removal of the detested Burbridge relieved the tension but did
not alter the administration's determination to end slavery. General
John M. Palmer was less obnoxious than his predecessor, but he
was equally determined to secure black enlistments. An act of 3
March 1865 freed the wives and children of blacks who enlisted,
and Palmer admitted, as the war drew to a close, that the army
was more interested in enlisting blacks in order to free them than
in obtaining soldiers. Some 20,000 Kentucky blacks were in
uniform by the end of the war, and about 9,000 others were
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enlisted later. 22 Kentucky supplied nearly as many blacks to the
Union army as it did whites to the Confederate forces . As a result
of this policy, slaveholders saw the number of slaves decrease
sharply and the value of the remainder decline like the price of
Confederate bonds. Any realistic assessment of slavery had to
conclude that its end was near.
The finish was, of course, provided by the Thirteenth
Amendment, to which Lincoln had turned as the final solution to
the slavery question. The proposal finally secured Congressional
approval in January 1865 and was submitted to the states for
ratification. George Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, was
one of the few prominent Kentuckians who supported it. Governor
Bramlette realized that the end of slavery was near, but he hoped
to secure the compensated emancipation and colonization that
Lincoln had suggested nearly three years earlier. When he
transmitted the proposed amendment to the legislature on 8
February 1865, Bramlette declared flatly that "no intelligent man,
whatever may be his desires upon the subject, can hope for the
perpetuation of slavery in Kentucky. . . . the facts exist and cannot
be changed by denying them or closing our eyes to their existence.
Whether the proposed amendment be ratified by you or not,
slavery has been fore-doomed by rebellion, and cannot be
maintained ." But then he marred his realism by recommending
that ratification be made contingent upon the federal government
paying Kentucky $34,179,246, the 1864 assessed value of the
slaves. 23 But the day was long gone when a Kentucky slaveholder
might have secured compensation, and the governor's pipe dream
was ignored. By votes of 56 to 28 and 21 to 12 the House and
Senate rejected the amendment.
Later efforts to secure ratification also failed, and Kentucky
retained slavery as the Thirteenth Amendment moved steadily
toward ratification. Newspapers continued to carry notices of slave
sales, but prices were only a fraction of what they had been a few
years earlier. General Palmer issued travel passes lavishly, and
thousands of blacks flocked into the state's cities or crossed the
Ohio in search of greater opportunities . In July Palmer estimated
that 100,863 persons had been freed through the military route and
that half of the remaining 129,000 had been freed through other
means. 24 The remaining 65,000 slaves were less than 30 percent of
the 1860 total. Eager to end slavery for all time, Palmer declared
the Thirteenth Amendment ratified and in force on 7 December
39
HARRISON
1865, eleven days before the secretary of state did so .
Even then the Kentucky legislature refused to change its stance.
On 25 January 1866 the House rejected 30 to 57 a motion to ratify
and declared that "the action of the past Legislature on this subject
is final. " 25 That gesture of defiance meant nothing, unless it
satisfied some stubborn Kentuckians who insisted upon clinging to
a discredited institution. Despite their determined efforts, slavery
in Kentucky had come to an end. It was indeed a Civil War
casualty.
NOTES
1
Iv an E. McDougle, Slavery in Kentucky, 1792-1865 (Lancaster, Pa.:
New Era Printing Co. , 1918), 10-12 .
2
Frank R. Mathias, "Kentucky's Third Constitution: A Restriction of
Majority Rule, " Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 75 (January
1977): 10, 18-19.
3 Lincoln to Fremont, 2 September 1861, in Roy P. Basler, ed ., The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols . (New Brunswick, N.J. :
Rutgers University Press, 1953-55), 4:506. See also E. Merton Coulter, Th e
Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill : University of
North Carolina Press, 1926), 1ll-12.
4
Basler, Works of Lincoln 5:48-49. Lincoln's effort to secure passage
of a compensated emancipation bill in Delaware, which had only 1,798
slaves in 1860, failed to come to a formal vote. H. Clay Reed, "Lincoln's
Compensated Emancipation Plan and Its Relation to Delaware," Delaware
Notes, 7th ser. (1931): 28-61 ; Carol E. Hoffecker, Delaware: A
Bicentennial History (New York: Norton, 1977), 101-2.
5 Basler, Works of Lincoln 5 :144-46, 160, 153. The president met with
border-state members of Congress on 10 March 1862 but failed to win
their support. The resolution that passed Congress approved the idea but
did not implement it. Stephen B. Oates, With Malice toward None: The
Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 267-70,
297-98 .
6
Cov ington Journal , 7 December 1861.
7
Covington Journal, 15 March 1862.
8
Letter in Frankfort Weekly Yeoman , 28 March 1862 .
9
Louisville Daily Democrat, quoted in Daily Nashville Patriot, 14
December 1861.
10
Congressional Globe, 37th Cong. , 2d sess., 10 March 1862, ll50; ll
March 1862, ll72-73.
11
Louisville Daily Democrat, 22 July 1862; House Journal, 12 March
1862, 813-14.
40
THE KENTUCKY REVIEW
12
:e.
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ject
to
v
f
The
Basler, Works of Lincoln 5:318; Oates, With Malice toward None,
307-8; Louisville Daily Democrat, 22 July 1862; Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln
and the Negro (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 106-8.
13
Louisville Daily Express , 23 July 1862; Louisville Daily Democrat, 22
July 1862.
14
Louisville Daily Express, 23 July 1862 . Casey was elected from the
First District on 20 January 1862 to fill the vacancy left when Henry C.
Burnett joined the Confederacy . Lewis and Richard H. Collins, History of
Kentucky, 2 vols. (Covington, 1874), 1:99 .
15
B. F. Buckner to Helen Martin, 5 November 1862, Buckner
Collection, Special Collections, University of Kentucky.
16
Frankfort Tri-Weekly Commonwealth , 19 November 1862.
17
Louisville Daily Democrat, 11 February 1864.
18
0fficial Records, ser . 1, 20, pt. 2, 282, 287.
19
Lowell H . Harrison, Th e Antislavery Movement in Kentucky
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1978), 106.
2
°Coulter, Civil War and Readjustment, 200-203.
21 0fficial Records, ser . 1, 45, pt. 2, 93-94.
22
Coulter, Civil War and Readjustment, 210, 265; Cincinnati Gazette, 3
August 1865.
23
House Journal , 8 February 1865, 395-99.
24 Cincinnati Gazette, 3 August 1865 .
25
House Journal , 25 February 1866, 324-27.
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41
HARRISON